To solve our problem, we wound up uninstalling Applian and using the Windows Media Player which, if you open it by selecting multiple files and having it open them as the default player, lets you play each one in turn using the "play" and "skip" buttons. We were able to minimize the Windows player to the task bar and bring it back at the point in the presentation where we wanted video--not as good as having four instances, each minimized and ready to start up, but good enough. With Applian, it was hard to keep the player from advancing too far into the first video before we had a chance to minimize it.